It’s fair to say that most people would retract at the mere thought of descending the fifth steepest slope in the United States on a snowboard. However, St. Paul Academy and Summit School senior Christian Koch and junior Nicolas Koch reveled in the fear they experienced last spring break as they slid down slope Lakeshutz at Breckenridge Ski Resort in Colorado.

“The scarier it is, the more fun it is,” Nicolas Koch said about snowboarding’s inherent fear factor.

Senior Chloe White has a similar affinity for the thrills of snowboarding: “I’ve always liked sports where you move really fast, like horseback riding and hockey, sports that will make you move faster than a normal human could go on their own,” she said.

More often than not, extreme sports junkies have grown up immersed in an extreme sports’ culture, learning at an early age how to face their fears head on. They develop a tolerance for fear that enables them to take uninhibited strides.

Brothers Christian and Nicolas Koch do not fit this profile as they learned how to snowboard at ages 14 and 12 respectively. Former SPA students Nick Thorsgaard and Eliot Wilhelm taught them the basics and from that point onwards, the brothers became autodidacts, driven to learn the intricacies of snowboarding and increase their skill.

“When you’re completely beginning, it can help to have a friend to point you in the right direction but past that, instruction would just be somebody forcing their style on you which isn’t what snowboarding is about,” Christian Koch said.

Nicolas Koch describes the definite and tangible improvement he sees himself making in snowboarding as an appealing aspect of the sport. “You can really tell when you’re getting better,” he said.

Amidst the rewarding victories one experiences as a snowboarder, are the literal and figurative falls. The road to improvement is unavoidably laden with failure, which is something Nicolas Koch accepts and appreciates. “You just can’t get better without falling,” he said.

Sophomore Lukas Kelsey- Friedmann isn’t afraid of falling either, despite the concussion he received from snowboarding in the recent past. “It’s just part of the sport,” he said.

White hasn’t fallen or injured herself as many times as Koch or Kelsey-Friedman, but she does share a common appreciation for the never-ending process of self improvement, inherent to snowboarding culture.

In the past year she has diverted her attention from the advancement of her own technique to the advancement of others’ teaching beginners at Afton Alps, Wild Mountain, and TrollHaugen ski and snowboard sites. White described the eight, nine, and ten year olds she instructed as “cute, but very difficult to work with at times”

Her job as a snowboarding instructor exemplifies the sport’s broad and encompassing culture. In addition to the physical act of snowboarding, snowboarding fosters social interaction among friends and teaching opportunities between the experienced and inexperienced. Engaging in the sport seriously is engaging in a larger, multifaceted culture of companionship, risk taking, and creativity.

“It’s gnarly,” as Nicolas Koch described it.